Then and Now
by blue-jean-serenades
Summary: He's tired, old, afraid and God, Dean hates this job. One-shot.


**This is sort of . . . the _Dean _version of 'Rusty Halo.' So, yeah. Enjoy.**

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><p>Sometimes Dean thinks he hates this job.<p>

He's so tired. The War and Sam and Michael and Lucifer and Castiel and the Apocalypse, it's all stretching him ten different ways at once, wearing him down until he isn't sure if he won't put a bullet in his own brain before Heaven (_or is it Hell?_) does it for him. So many damn things to think about, all the time, like whether or not he'll wake up to Sam getting high off demon blood or in some creepy-ass town five years in the future or at the end of an angel's sword or if the world will die screaming in blood and fire and _God_, Dean knows he isn't worth shit, but it'd be nice to have a little job security, you know? He hasn't felt safe in ages, not since Cold Oak, not since Dad went missing (_forever ago, before things went bad, before everything went wrong_). He hasn't felt anything in a long time, and he sure as hell hasn't felt safe in—has it really been years?

Time flies.

One day, Dean thinks, he will wake up and there will be nothing in the mirror but a shriveled husk of a man—a gaunt, weary face with empty eyes and no soul, not anymore, not since Hell. He feels so _old_, at night or in the morning or in the car sometimes waiting for Sam to get back with the latest crappy-ass diner food, when he sits in the front seat and tries desperately to remember what it felt like to drive these roads and not feel afraid. Of everything. Of himself, his brother, the future.

He's tired, old, afraid and _God_, Dean hates this job.

But God isn't here.

He tries to feel it, sometimes. That spark, that careless energy he used to have. He used to love hunting, once upon a time, if only because it was the only time John noticed him, if only because it was all he'd ever known, the guns and the monsters and the blood. He used to (_maybe sort of not really) _like his life. Or if he didn't like it, at least he didn't hate it. Not like this. He didn't know what hate was back then.

Hate is looking at the only person you've ever tried to save and not being able to recognize them. Hate is looking God's messenger in the eye as he tells you that you're too late, he's not here, the Heavenly Father has left the building. Hate is worlds ending in death and madness, hate is angels with sinking smiles and demons with pretend halos and nothing ever the way it should be. Hate is Lucifer coming and Michael coming and _make the right choice, Dean Winchester_, because the fate of your brother and Heaven and the world and all these six billion lives that could never, ever possibly even come _close _to how fucked-up yours is right now is on your shoulders, be careful and don't screw this one up, Dean, don't break under the weight like you always do, don't let me—_us_—_them_—down.

Hate is trading nightmares for nightmares, for a life forged in blood with one forged in fire, and Dean is sick and tired of carrying the sins of a world on his shoulders.

Yes. Sick and tired and old and _afraid_, so afraid—because what if he isn't strong enough, what if he lets his brother down, lets humanity down, what if Sam doesn't make it and the world ends—or worse, what if Sam doesn't make it and the world _doesn't_ end, Dean doesn't die, what if Sam is gone and Dean has to keep fighting without him? That scares him more than anything Michael or Lucifer could do, because the worst Dean could ever suffer at their hands would only kill him—_but dying is easy_, he thinks, _it's the living that's hard_, and he can't see the point in a world without Sam.

But things between him and his brother are too friggin' complicated right now, so Dean just hunts and drinks more than he should and tries to figure out how they got so lost, so broken along the way. He used to like his brother, when they were kids, but somewhere past Stanford, past Dad, past Ruby—somewhere along the road, he forgot what it felt like to blast classic rock in the Impala and _laugh_, forgot what it felt like to smile, and remembering is so damn hard because Sam has made too many mistakes, and Dean is too good at holding grudges.

He doesn't like his brother anymore, but he thinks he might still love him.


End file.
